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Tips to End Alcohol Dependency

by Ed Philips

I have been sober over 9 years and it was the best thing I ever did in my life. I had started drinking when I was 12 years old. I also started smoking pot that same year. I was trying to escape my adolescent feelings of inadequacy, and I wanted to fit in with my peers.

It was the early seventies and everyone seemed to be getting high. I continued using for 24 years, till 1997, when I finally woke up one morning and realized that I just couldn’t do this anymore. I was very lucky, as bad karma was surrounding me everywhere I turned, but for some reason I was protected from any real harm. As I like to put it I was a medium bottom drunk. I lost my integrity and scruples, but got to keep my furniture.

I was making very good money at the time, but a huge hole just kept building inside of me, and I knew that I couldn’t stop using. My drinking and pot smoking turned to cocaine and then eventually crack. I was sinking fast. It was the grace of God, a good therapist, and a caring doctor, who finally helped me get on the track to sobriety.

I went into an evening re-hab, and finished that program in a few months. The key is to remember that I have a disease, the disease of alcoholism. It is an obsession of the mind, affecting our physical, emotional, and spiritual states.

If you are travelling the same path my suggestion is to truly turn your “will” over to a higher power, the energy of the universe, God, or whatever you choose to call it. If you believe that there is a power greater than yourself, then you are half way home. Recognizing this causes an immediate sense of humility which allows you get out of your ego, and step into some sense of freedom. It is a new path, and a new day.

For me a twelve step program truly worked. Everyone has their own thing that will help them from picking up a drink or a drug. Find what that is, and stick with it. It also helped me to be reading spiritual literature. Books such as “Conversations with God” and anything by Marianne Williamson really helped. anything by Marianne Williamson really helped.

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